dictionary of a common visual language

Since 2008 images of mass protests emerged globally in increasingly shorter intervals. Starting in Tunisia a wave of protests swept through the Maghreb; a few months later the Puerta del Sol in Madrid and Syntagma Square in Athens filled up with people and tear gas. The movement then caught fire with the Occupy mobilizations in the United States. In due time, similar images from Cyprus, Portugal, Bulgaria, Turkey, Brazil and other places followed. The protests and movements refer to one another in solidarity, exchange digital messages and share a feeling that in so many different places, it‘s about the same thing. Even if singular events happen to function as a trigger, the protests reveal fundamental questions of social organisation: What is the verb-form of democracy? How can a jobless person strike? What is the difference between justice and equality? How does commoning work? Why do we assume identity is a singular issue? The dictionary of a common visual language is a point of departure from which questions of postmodern protest movements based on existing imagery and subjective evaluation are visualized.